Gail Alexan­der

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts do not ex­pect that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s “Trop­i­cal Trump” quipped ref­er­ence to St Lu­cia Op­po­si­tion Leader Al­lan Chas­tanet in March will im­pact T&T’s re­la­tions with Amer­i­ca’s new Don­ald Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion at this time.

How­ev­er, one an­a­lyst said, it could al­so in­flu­ence how the US views T&T in the fu­ture.

Views on Guardian Me­dia’s query came yes­ter­day from po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath and Dr Shane Mo­hammed.

In March, Dr Row­ley, ad­dress­ing a PNM San Fer­nan­do meet­ing, crit­i­cised the UNC for fail­ing to meet with the Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss an­ti-crime mea­sures, though find­ing time to meet St Lu­cian Op­po­si­tion Leader Allen Chas­tanet, whom Dr Row­ley called “Trop­i­cal Trump.”

While the Op­po­si­tion could not find time for the na­tion­al cri­sis, Row­ley said “They did find time to have a meet­ing”with Chas­tanet. The lat­ter had ad­dressed the UNC’s Mon­day night an­ti-crime meet­ing in San­gre Grande at that time. Row­ley re­port­ed­ly said, “As if St Lu­cia, who has Chas­tanet in their gov­ern­ment to run their coun­try, threw him out of of­fice, un­cer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly, but he in Trinidad is try­ing to tell us how to run Trinidad.”

“No thanks, ‘Trop­i­cal Trump’,” he said, spark­ing laugh­ter from the au­di­ence.

In March 2019, dur­ing Trump’s first ad­min­is­tra­tion, Chas­tanet—then St Lu­cian prime min­is­ter—was one of five Caribbean lead­ers sym­pa­thet­ic to Trump’s hard­line po­si­tion against Venezuela who were in­vit­ed to Trump’s Palm Beach home.

That was to dis­cuss Venezuela and im­proved US part­ner­ship in the re­gion. The five–part of the Li­ma group–sup­port­ed a US-backed OAS res­o­lu­tion not to recog­nise the le­git­i­ma­cy of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, who was be­gin­ning a sec­ond term then, plung­ing Venezuela in­to a po­lit­i­cal cri­sis.

T&T and oth­er Cari­com states that were not in­vit­ed to Trump’s meet­ing had then been in­volved in try­ing to se­cure a peace­ful res­o­lu­tion of Venezuela’s cri­sis.

Af­ter the Trump meet­ing, Chas­tanet boast­ed that there hadn’t been “that lev­el of en­gage­ment since US Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan had en­gaged for­mer Ja­maican PM Ed­ward Sea­ga in the ear­ly 1980s” and it had “been a re­al­ly long time” since re­gion­al lead­ers were in­vit­ed to meet with the US pres­i­dent.

Among fur­ther praise, he claimed the meet­ing “was re­al­ly about Trump’s vi­sion to re-ini­ti­ate di­a­logue with the Caribbean.”

Yes­ter­day, Row­ley did not re­spond to a query re­gard­ing whether his “Trop­i­cal Trump” la­bel could af­fect T&T’s re­la­tion­ship with the new Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion. Nor did UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Ra­goonath stat­ed that when Row­ley made his re­marks, he was not on­ly tar­get­ing T&T’s Op­po­si­tion Leader but al­so St Lu­cia’s Op­po­si­tion Leader.

Ra­goonath said his ref­er­ence to a “Trop­i­cal Trump” left a neg­a­tive im­pres­sion, not just in T&T and St Lu­cia, but it could al­so in­flu­ence how the Unit­ed States views T&T in the fu­ture.

“But hav­ing said that,” Ra­goonath added, “I don’t think at this point it would be deemed sig­nif­i­cant in the US’s fo­cus. We don’t have oil/gas or en­er­gy is­sues as op­posed to Guyana, so Guyana might be more of a con­cern to the US fo­cus on is­sues. If Trump de­cides to go af­ter Venezuela and T&T is the net los­er out of that, I don’t think Trump or the US would be too con­cerned about T&T. So for the mo­ment, the ‘Trop­i­cal Trump’ com­ment isn’t an is­sue at all.”

Mean­while, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Mo­hammed said, “I be­lieve the world is look­ing on cau­tious­ly at what the new Pres­i­dent Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion looks like and his key pol­i­cy agen­da. I don’t be­lieve the ‘Trop­i­cal Trump’ com­ment would nec­es­sar­i­ly hold wa­ter be­cause I be­lieve it would fall un­der the pres­i­dent-elect’s radar. How­ev­er, I take note of the si­lence of sev­er­al world lead­ers on the elec­tion of the pres­i­dent-elect and how it cor­re­lates to ei­ther his ut­ter­ances on the cam­paign trail or pre­vi­ous strained re­la­tions.”

He added, “I’d cau­tion the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter to tread strate­gi­cal­ly in re­la­tion to the new in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion in T&T’s best in­ter­est. I’d al­so sug­gest that both the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader have con­tin­gency poli­cies to ad­dress the pos­si­ble poli­cies that will af­fect us di­rect­ly in fu­ture.”